Earlier, I wrote a post about the use of long tail keywords. Focusing on long tail keywords could be a good strategy, especially when trying to rank in a highly competitive market. But how do you decide on which (long tail) keywords you want to rank? This post will give you some handy tips and keyword research tools to make your keyword research a bit easier.

One possible problem is that although the Keyword Planner has some cool new features (including integration of the Google Traffic Estimator, which will be retired too), as of this writing, the indispensable Exact Match and Phrase Match features are nowhere to be found! Whole books will become useless without these, so I hope Google will eventually port them to the Keyword Planner. Nor do you see the “Include specific content” option, which is a life-saver for the adult industry, which spends the most on Google PPC.

I’d give Long Tail Pro a 4.5/5 stars for its’ ease of use, ability to generate a high number of long tail keyword searches of low to medium competition, check rankings and check Top 10 competition on any keyword search as to what the results of number of backlinks, domain authority/page authority and other pertinent ranking data from Moz.com’s api.
From time-to-time – there are discounts or promotions available for Long Tail Pro. Whenever these become available – all links on my site that lead to the Long Tail Pro sales page will reflect the discounted price. If there is a huge sale or a massive deal – I always let my email subscribers know about it as soon as possible. If you’re not on my email list yet – feel free to sign up by clicking the button below. I’ll even send you one of my FREE guides!

This isn’t the only tool that mines Google Autocomplete. There’s also KeywordTool.io, but this tool restricts results to ~700 keywords (more are available for “pro” members). Infinite Suggest is another alternative, but despite the name, I’ve found that it still doesn’t find anywhere near the number of keywords that Keyword Shitter finds. And there are tons of other Google Autocomplete miners too. Just Google “google auto suggest tool” for more. There’s also this tool from SEOChat which mines autocomplete suggestions from Google, Bing, Amazon, and YouTube.

Making a list remains hard. And up until a few years ago, doing your keyword research was much easier. You could simply check Google Analytics to see which terms people used to find your website. That is no longer possible. So you’re pretty much left in the dark about the terms people use in search engines to end up at your website. Luckily, there are some other tools which can make your keyword research a bit easier, and could help you speed up the process a bit:
6. Filters. On the top area of the main pane, you can find the “Filters”. These will allow you to filter your keyword suggestions list in real time. Just start typing and your list will be filtered accordingly. You can filter for “Keywords” (to only show keywords that include a specific word or words); “Suggested Bid” & “Local Searches” allow you to enter minimum or maximum values; “Advertiser Competition” (this comes in handy, because the higher the competition the more money there is to be made if you target that keyword); “Avg. Amazon Reviews” (a neat feature for those who sell products on Amazon or have an Amazon FBA business — less reviews equal less competition, hence more chances to rank on top of Amazon’s product search pages); “Avg. Keyword Competitiveness” or “KC” is Long Tail Pro’s proprietary metric that calculates how hard it is to rank for a keyword in a range from 0 to 100 — 0 being no competition and 100 impossible to rank for. All of these filter columns can be used to sort the keyword suggestion list as you prefer.

Here is the part of this post that we’ve all been waiting for. How to make Long Tail Pro pay for itself! I can tell you with absolute certainty that all of this isn’t just fluff designed to try to get you to buy the product. I’ve actually done all 4 of these things – and I continue to do the top 3 to this day! This stuff really works and I make WAY more than enough money, as a result of using Long Tail Pro, to pay for itself.

Here’s where this tool’s value really comes in: Keyword Tool has keyword research tools for multiple search engines, not just Google. If you want to do keyword research for YouTube, Bing, Amazon, the App Store, or eBay, they’ve got keyword suggestions (and data) for you. If YouTube videos, for example, are a central part of your marketing strategy, this could easily be worth the money.

3. Ninja Outreach: Full disclosure this is my own tool, and it is actually an outreach tool, so you may be wondering how it plays into Keyword Research. The fact is there are quite a few data points that NinjaOutreach gets for me that I find useful in keyword research, such as the articles that are ranking for the keyword in Google, their domain authority, their page authority, the number of backlinks they have, and other social and contact data. It's pretty valuable stuff, especially if there is going to be an outreach campaign tied into the keyword research. I wrote a great article with Jake from LTP showing the combination of the two tools.

To drive search engine traffic, whether through organic search or paid search advertisements, you need the right keywords, plus a process to expand your keyword lists over time. That’s where our free tool comes in. WordStream’s Free Keyword Tool gives you hundreds of relevant keyword results, plus additional, actionable information like competition level and estimated CPC, all for free!
The Search Based Keyword Tool is intended for researching keywords within Google’s Adwords network. Unlike the Keyword Tool, the Search based Keyword Tool is based solely on searches from Google.com. This factor causes the search volumes displayed to be considerably lower than the Keyword Tool. Because this tool is intended for paid search keyword research, it contains additional information on Suggested Bid and Ad/Search Share. The Search Based Keyword Tool is seamlessly integrated into the Google Adwords interface and allows marketers to add keywords to their PPC campaigns without having to login to their Adwords Client Center.
I was paid approximately 2/3 of the funds upfront and will receive about 1/3 over the next 2 years. It's now been almost 7 months since we closed the deal, and I've received the first couple of seller financing payments for that final 1/3 on time and am very confident that will continue for the next year and a half until I'm fully paid that final portion.